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Doing it by the book

By Bill Edgar

April 12 2004, 1:00am, The Times

MATT HOLLAND ponders whether he is cut out to be a manager. “I don’t know, but if you asked my wife, she would say ‘no’ — I’m not hard enough,” he said. For a man who moments earlier confessed to a fear of dogs and cats, who favours family picnics in the country over raucous nights on the town and who is more likely to contract yellow fever than receive a yellow card, it might seem a fair assessment.

Yet the inevitability of his selection each week to join the hurly-burly of central midfield suggests otherwise. From Mel Machin to George Burley, Joe Royle to Alan Curbishley, Holland’s four managers at Bournemouth, Ipswich Town and Charlton Athletic have given the impression that they would rather…